Meteor Crater: The Ten Seconds That Made a Hole in Arizona

A hole in the desert. Three-quarters of a mile across, 550 feet deep, and 50,000 years old. For most of the last century, the best geologists in America looked at it and said: volcano.

They were wrong. And the man who proved they were wrong spent 26 years and most of his fortune drilling for a giant iron meteorite that had already vaporized on contact.

Here is the part nobody tells you. The rock that made this was only about 150 feet across, roughly a decent office building, moving around 26,000 miles per hour. When it hit, the energy released was greater than 20 million tons of TNT. In seconds it excavated a bowl 700 feet deep and threw 175 million tons of limestone and sandstone across the desert. Blocks the size of houses landed on the rim.

Then the meteorite was gone. Vaporized into iron-nickel spherules too small to see. Daniel Moreau Barringer, a Philadelphia mining engineer, bought the land in 1903 sure a mountain of iron ore sat underneath. Right about the impact, wrong about the prize. His drill jammed at 1,376 feet, the money ran out in 1929, and he died later that year, having lived just long enough to see his theory accepted.

Know before you go

Meteor Crater sits off Interstate 40 at Exit 233, about 45 minutes east of Flagstaff and 20 minutes west of Winslow, Arizona. It is privately owned by the Barringer family, so no park pass works here and there is no reservation system: you buy a ticket and walk in, and as of 2026 general admission runs $29 for adults 13 to 59, $27 for seniors 60 and over, $25 for juniors 6 to 12, and free for kids 5 and under and active-duty U.S. military. Admission covers the Discovery Center and Space Museum, the films, the outdoor lookout points, and the guided rim tours. You cannot wander the rim or descend into the crater on your own, and dogs are not allowed past the parking lot, though there is a staffed shaded kennel there for them.

Quick facts

Do you need a reservation for Meteor Crater?

No. Buy at the door or online, walk in, done. Tickets bought online never expire and work on any date, which helps if your Arizona road trip is still theoretical.

The one thing worth planning is the crater floor hike. Guided descents run Saturday mornings, cost extra, and fill up, so book ahead through the official site. Everything else, guided rim tour included, comes with your ticket on a rolling schedule.

Go in the morning. The site opens at 8 a.m. and hours shift with the season, so confirm the day before on the official visitor info page. Morning light rakes across the walls and picks out the overturned rock beds. By noon the crater flattens into a beige dish and your photos will not look like what your eyes saw.

What is it actually like on the rim?

Underwhelming for about four seconds, then not.

You step onto a viewing platform and see a large bowl. Your brain files it as "big hole." Then a guide points across and tells you those specks on the far wall are people, or that a 60-story building set on the floor would come up to your eye level. Scale arrives late here. That is the whole experience.

Four lookout points step along the north rim at different heights, and the crater changes shape as you move between them. The highest gives you the near-perfect circle, the lower ones give you the depth. The guided rim tour is why you budget two hours instead of one.

Inside, the Discovery Center holds the part most people skip and then regret. From 1964 to 1972 Apollo astronauts trained here, learning to read ejecta the way they would need to on the moon. There is an Apollo 11 capsule on site, and a slab of the actual meteorite. Closest most of us get to touching something from the asteroid belt.

Can I do this with a dog?

Not inside. Pets are barred from the visitor center, the rim, and every tour, with no workaround. What Meteor Crater does have, which almost no Arizona attraction does, is a real solution: a shaded, staffed outdoor Pet Ramada and dog run in the parking lot, $17 per pet. Bring your own crate and they will try to keep your dog inside the admissions area instead.

Do not leave a dog in the car. This is open high desert with nothing blocking the sun. The kennel exists because people used to try it.

Bringing kids?

One of the better Arizona stops for kids, and better for a curious eight-year-old than a toddler. The site is compact, paved, mostly railed, and the whole visit runs one to two hours. Nobody has to hike anything. There is a hands-on kids exhibit called the Blast Zone and a 4D theater that delivers exactly the sensory chaos small humans want.

The bail-out is easy: climate-controlled building, café on site, parking lot 200 feet from everything. Compare that to a canyon hike where turning around costs two hours. Ages 5 and under are free.

Stay safe

The hazards here are boring, which is why people get caught by them. No shade on the rim. Wind arrives across 30 miles of open plain with nothing to slow it and will take a hat off your head and into a 550-foot hole. Bring water even for a one-hour visit and sunscreen even in February, because you are at roughly 5,700 feet and the sun is stronger than it feels.

July and August bring monsoon cells that build fast in the afternoon. An exposed rim above a flat plain is the wrong place to be during lightning, and staff will clear the platforms when it happens. Morning avoids the heat and the storms both. Stay behind the railings while you are out there: the crater walls are loose fractured rock, not solid stone.

Frequently asked questions

Is Meteor Crater worth the money?

If you give it two hours, yes. If you plan a 15-minute photo stop, the ticket will feel steep. The value sits in the guided rim tour and the Discovery Center, both included with admission.

Can you hike to the bottom of Meteor Crater?

Only on a guided crater floor hike, which runs Saturday mornings, requires advance registration, and costs extra on top of admission. Independent descent is never permitted. Treat it as a real hike: steep out-and-back in exposed desert with no shade on the way up.

How far is Meteor Crater from the Grand Canyon?

Roughly two and a half hours from Grand Canyon Village, most of it through Flagstaff on US-180 and I-40. They pair well on a northern Arizona loop, and the contrast is the point: one hole took the Colorado River six million years, the other took about ten seconds.

Is Meteor Crater covered by the America the Beautiful pass?

No. Despite the Natural Landmark designation it received from the Department of the Interior in 1968, the crater sits on private land owned by the Barringer family. Federal park, senior, and annual passes do not apply. Check the official site for current rates and group or military discounts.

Put it on the map

Meteor Crater is one of the 60 stops on the McSenderson Arizona Outdoor Adventure Map, and it is the one that surprises people most. Everyone expects red rock and canyons. Nobody expects the asteroid. Scratch it off, then go find the other 59 with our 60-stop Arizona bucket list, Monument Valley, and Grand Canyon National Park.

Ryan Laboy — Co-founder, McSenderson. Single-digit handicap golfer and ten-year skier based in Flagstaff, Arizona. Researches and designs every McSenderson map. hello@mcsenderson.com